


they say love is a virtue

by lyricalecho



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: DSOD spoilers, Gen, Obviously., kaiba and yami not present but heavily discussed, post-dsod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalecho/pseuds/lyricalecho
Summary: Mokuba helps Yugi follow through on his dreams. Yugi helps Mokuba through a crisis of faith.





	they say love is a virtue

**Author's Note:**

> hey so the ending of dsod sure happened, huh?? this fic is pretty much entirely about that. possibly any fic i ever write again is going to be about that. and Future Game Designer Yugi, my sweet+precious boy. the movie comes out on dvd next week if you're in the uk or preordered it from the uk like i did, so this is in celebration of that, i guess! title is from the national's "sea of love," though i definitely never would have written this without listening to CHVRCHES's "the mother we share" on loop like 10 times in a row. thanks yugioh.

The desk looks far too big for Mokuba, as it always has, the office more cavernous with him as its center; he has his hair tied back, and Yugi can't tell if it makes him look older or if it just makes him look different. 

And then he turns to see him, and beams, and chirps, "Hey, Yugi!" and like that it's the same as ever. 

"Hi, Mokuba," says Yugi, pulling himself out of the doorway. "I brought the, um - the prototype? That you asked about?"

If the word sounds as alien as it feels coming out of his mouth, then Mokuba doesn't comment on it, still brightly enthused as he circles around to the front of the desk. 

"That's perfect," he says. "Can I see it? I mean - I guess you wouldn't have brought it if you didn't want me to see it, right."

"No, it's a secret prototype," says Yugi, smiling, feeling some of his tension dissipate as he hands it over. (It's a puzzle box game, of course it is; if this works out, or even if it doesn't, then Yugi has a whole lifetime during which he can design things that don't feel like weaving threads of himself, but, well. If nothing else, this is one more chance to get it out of his system.) Mokuba takes it from him and perches on the edge of the desk - Kaiba's desk, his desk - studying it intently. It's an odd image: this still-scrawny thirteen-year-old, with absolutely no veneer of professionalism, in a dark blue suit that absolutely cost more than every single thing Yugi's ever owned, combined. 

He watches Mokuba for a few seconds, and then says, "You're serious about this."

Mokuba looks up from the prototype for the first time. "Why do you keep asking me that?" he says. "Do you not trust me? That's a pretty bad start to a business relationship, I think."

_Business relationship_. Right. With this boy Yugi's known since he tumbled out of a bush wearing a bandana over his face and demanding a fight from someone he'd never met. Business - why not. It makes about as much sense as anything else in Yugi's life. 

"I trust you," he tells him, and Mokuba still looks a little surprised to hear it. "I just... don't want you to feel obligated, or anything, to help me."

"What," Mokuba says, "like you'll have an unfair advantage because you know the interim CEO of KaibaCorp?"

Yugi shrugs. "Something like that."

Mokuba scribbles something in a notepad next to him. "All business happens through connections, Yugi," he says, like this should be obvious. "Besides, if my brother were in charge right now he'd definitely be rejecting all of your designs on purpose, so if you think about it, I'm really just evening the odds."

"You really think he would?" says Yugi, and Mokuba scoffs a little and looks up from the notepad. 

"You've known him a long time," he says. "Have you ever seen him let go of a grudge?"

It's a fair point. It's also the first time in these past few weeks that Mokuba has mentioned Kaiba unprompted. Yugi watches as he goes back to writing, and then asks, quietly, "How long has he been gone this time?"

The pencil stops moving, but Mokuba doesn't look up. "...Two months."

"That's a while, right?"

"It's the longest so far." He taps the pencil twice before setting it down, resting the prototype on top of the notepad. "It's not - I don't want to seem like I can't handle things, because I obviously can, I wouldn't be doing this if I couldn't. He's smarter than I am, obviously, but I - I know business. I'm good at this. You know that. And no one's tried to have us killed in a while, not since everything - " He makes a vague hand gesture that only Yugi would understand: not since all their lives stopped being whatever it was they used to be. "But the same people who weren't happy about taking orders from a seventeen-year-old aren't really any happier about taking them from me, and - when you're by yourself, it's - "

"Mokuba," says Yugi, and Mokuba blinks, steadies, refocuses on him. "When we first met, on Pegasus's island, we made a promise that we would look out for you. Not... not for your brother's sake, but for yours. Do you remember that?" 

He nods, not slow to remember but not sure how to acknowledge it. Yugi smiles at him. "That's not the kind of thing that just goes away," he says. 

All these years, and kindness still seems to put him at a loss. "...Thanks, Yugi," he says, after a moment, and moves the puzzle to the corner of the desk as he stands up, stretches a little, crosses over to one of the couches in the center of the room. "Do you want anything?" he asks, leaning against the arm of the couch but not sitting. "I can have someone bring tea, that - that's something I can do now."

"I'm alright, thank you," says Yugi, sitting opposite him. The couch, too, feels huge; maybe the reason Mokuba doesn't seem to use any of the furniture for its intended purpose is because he would be dwarfed by all of it. 

"Suit yourself," says Mokuba, and sure enough perches himself on the arm. He seems unsettled still; always a little restless but more now than before. 

"Can I ask you something?" he says after a quiet moment, and Yugi replies, "Of course."

Mokuba shifts; tugs on his sleeves; looks away again. "During the tournament - when you dueled Diva - he came back, didn't he?"

And the _he_ is unmistakable now, the same one Yugi's heard a thousand times, always with the slight stumble in the conjugation: he, you, him. "...He did."

Mokuba is quiet as though he's putting something into the world he can't take back. "If he had the choice," he says finally, "do you think that he would have stayed, if you asked?"

And - this is where they are, at last. The unspoken linchpin that's always existed between the two of them; the unvoiced assumption that's tethered all of their interactions. Everything and everything else about Mokuba aside: Yugi can think of nobody else in his life who understands quite as well what it is to exist as a fainter mirror, as a linked half. 

Asking questions without asking questions. "Mokuba - " It's been two months. He remembers. "Mokuba. Your brother's going to come back."

"He doesn't have to," says Mokuba, unconvincingly. 

"He will."

"No, just - what I mean is - " Mokuba stands up, loops around the couch, sits down again in the center, looks nearly swallowed by it. " - You all used to get upset with him for being hard, and - and I did too, but - we never would have survived everything we went through if one of us wasn't like that, and he didn't want it to have to be me. You know? He made so many choices just because of - he gave up _dreams_ for me, things he _worked for_ , and all I did for him was make his life harder, so I do - honestly I do, I do really want him to have this if that's what he wants. If he needs this one thing for himself or even if he's wanted me gone the whole time and he had to invent extradimensional travel to do it, then he should have that. Right? And I know that, but - it just always felt like - like no matter what we would always choose each other. And this is the first time I've thought that... maybe I was wrong."

He says it straightforwardly, without stumbling, but doesn't make eye contact. Yugi's throat feels tight. "Mokuba, he - you're what's most important to him. You have to know that."

"Sometimes things change."

"He loves you."

"Then why couldn't he _stay_?" He grips the edge of the couch as he says it and then freezes, flushing a little, his voice raw. "It's not - " Yugi is quiet. Mokuba takes a deep breath. "It doesn't matter, but - I didn't need it, you know? The promises, all of it, I - I only ever needed him to stay."

He doesn't quite close off after that, something Yugi knows wouldn't be possible if it were anyone but him, anytime but now; as he finishes the sentence Yugi is already crossing over to the couch to sit next to him, not touching him but close. Mokuba stares straight ahead, his breathing shaky, and Yugi - Yugi knows enough to be patient with Kaiba, ever since the duel, knows _you have your bond and I have mine_ , knows they grieve differently, and still, and still. He and Kaiba and the person Kaiba went to find are all three of them adults, all three of them making their own decisions, none of them sharing a body, which means it doesn't matter that Kaiba left without telling Yugi where he was going, or it shouldn't. It doesn't matter that Kaiba didn't say anything when he got back, that it was Mokuba who told Yugi weeks later, that he still hasn't heard anything from - it doesn't matter. He knows patience; he knows to forgive. But watching Mokuba, now, ungrounded without the only thing that's ever kept him going - he starts to feel angry, a little. At Kaiba; at both of them. 

_You're just projecting onto him what you can't feel for yourself_ , he thinks, briefly - strange how every voice in his head is his own - and maybe he is. But that's not going to help Mokuba either way. 

"Stupid," Mokuba says now, rubbing at his eye. "Stupid, I shouldn't - I think this is still technically a business meeting? God, I was just talking about how I'm totally ready to handle things, and now I'm - "

"I think the meeting is probably over now," Yugi says. "I think we might just be talking as friends."

Mokuba gives him a half-amused Kaiba stare. "You know we're not good at that," he says, and the _we_ is a slip, one Yugi's familiar with, a habit like navigating your house in the dark - or a maze of upside-down stone staircases - 

But Mokuba. "I guess meetings _would_ be more of your native language, huh," says Yugi, which gets a soft, dry laugh.

"You know what the weirdest part of all this is?" Mokuba says, staring off. "I mean, with me running the company, for - whatever, for however long this might be? It's... it's that our name isn't Kaiba." He glances back to Yugi, wondering how to proceed. "I mean, legally it is, which I guess is all that matters, but - it wasn't that to begin with. It was his name, and Seto kept it because... you know how he is, about taking all of that back, and I kept it because it was Seto's, but - without him here it's just me." He counts on his fingers. "Gozaburo and Noah and Seto and then just me, and my company, sort of, but named after - something that was never actually mine in the first place."

Yugi doesn't know what to do for him; in this specific area, for him and his brother both, he feels as though he never has. "...Do you want me to stay here tonight?" he says. "Rent a movie or something, Joey still keeps that list of everything you haven't seen - "

"I'm not gonna bolt, if that's what you were thinking," says Mokuba, and he wasn't, but hearing it he wonders. "I know at this point it seems like I'm, uh, genetically predisposed to that but it's - I'm okay." He straightens a little - which is Kaiba - and smirks - which is him - and then adds: "Someone's gotta run this place."

What must it be like, Yugi wonders, to spend this much of your life locked in towers. He says, "I just don't want you to be alone."

A raised eyebrow, and Yugi knows what it means: there's only ever been one definition of 'alone,' for either of them, and right now they both are. Alone is what's stretched out in front of Yugi like a desert for the past two years and the rest of his singular life; alone is Mokuba and an unmatched locket and a name with no meaning. 

Mokuba says, "...Do you really believe he's going to come back? I don't mean this time," he adds, before Yugi can answer. "I mean, maybe this time, but - one of these days he's going to have to decide, right? Either he stays with - " A pause, again, that epithetic hesitation " - with whatever it is he's been chasing after for years, or - or he comes back. To this."

_To me_ , he doesn't say, probably because it steps just barely too close to making the question _it's me or it's him_ , which Yugi knows neither of them are equipped for. "I don't know," Yugi says, and Mokuba nods like he was expecting it. It's the same answer Yugi's been holding onto the whole time, the one to Mokuba's first question, _would he have stayed, if you asked_ : he doesn't know. He doesn't know, and at sixteen he would have known like a fixed point, like a compass star, but now he's coming up empty, and both of them are adrift and alone. Maybe that was the stab of hurt he felt when he first learned where Kaiba had gone: not jealousy that he might choose Kaiba over Yugi, but jealousy that Kaiba could know something that Yugi's forgotten how to believe. Or, maybe worse: Kaiba knowing as little as Yugi does, but Kaiba - _Seto Kaiba_ \- unafraid of receiving the answer that terrifies Yugi still. "I don't know what he's going to do. But it's going to be okay."

Mokuba definitely doesn't quite believe this, but he looks like maybe eventually he could; a faith it's taken Yugi an eternity to earn. "I just - " he starts, his hands clenching tight on his knees. " - I don't know who I am without him." And then he flinches on an inhale and turns to look at Yugi, rare apology behind his eyes. "...And I just realize I said that in front of you, specifically, which is probably not the best - obviously you would - "

"It's fine," says Yugi, meaning it: Mokuba is thirteen, and Kaiba's brother, which means that the fact he's able to course-correct at all when he's acting like his emotions are the center of the universe is something of a miracle. "I mean, it probably helps that you're talking to the one person on earth who's been through this on a _weirder_ level, right?"

"God," says Mokuba. "It's so weird, isn't it."

"It's so, so weird." Yugi tilts his head at him. "Honestly, though: are you going to be alright?"

"Yeah," says Mokuba quickly, stepping off of the couch and tugging out his sleeves. "Yeah, I mean, I've made it this far." He crosses back over to the desk, taps his fingers against the prototype again, his back still to Yugi. "I'll, um - I'll call you tomorrow? About this? I've gotta take a look at it, let you know any design things before we start talking about any of the actual licensing stuff, there's - there's a lot of boring technicalities we'll both have to deal with but we'll get to all that." 

He turns and smiles small, the smoothly practiced one Yugi's seen him use in public, tension still heavy along his shoulders. And watching him Yugi feels that icepick stab again, the only thing in the past few months to break through his focused affirmation of _you know Kaiba, you know he needs this, you have to be patient with him_ \- a sharp grip of anger that he doesn't remember from who he was long before, but one that can only be his, now. Alone, alone, and left unanswered, and both of them - 

"You know what?" says Yugi clearly. "...Fuck it."

"Yugi!" Mokuba reels, in full delighted shock, false innocence still the weapon he wields best now he's old enough to understand it. "You can't use that kind of _language_ in front of me!"

Again: the sentiment is so Kaiba but the delivery so him, and Yugi stands, emboldened. "No, I mean - not the prototype, the prototype can wait - I mean like... just for right now... do you want to just be mad? And then later we can work out - how to feel, and what to do, but - just for like an hour - I mean, do you just want to be upset?"

Mokuba stares, like he suspects a trick. "You sound deranged, Yugi," he says, when Yugi offers no qualifier; and then looks to the door, and the phone, and the notepad on the desk. "...Just for tonight?"

"Just for tonight," Yugi reiterates. "And, who knows, maybe he'll be back in the morning. But until then - I think I want to be mad, a little? I think I want you to be mad. I think I would feel better if you could be mad."

Anger is not a panacea. Mokuba has lived knowing that. But here, with no one to ground but each other, things they've never allowed themselves - Yugi watches as he closes his eyes, inhales, places his hand against his chest (and Yugi knows that gesture, tried so many times to find something to replace the weight around his neck but nothing ever seemed to fit right) - and then he undoes his hair, shakes it out into shaggy disarray, and, for the first time, lets something go. 

"Come on," he says to Yugi, heading for the door. 

"Where are we going?" Yugi asks, already following. 

Mokuba whirls, the glint in his eye reminiscent of an awful lot of things. "I," he says, "am going to take down every single piece of Blue-Eyes White Dragon paraphernalia in this entire building. And then tomorrow we can figure out what to do about that very bad decision. But just for now - "

"Just for now," Yugi agrees, and follows him. 


End file.
